He’s used to feeling his clothes cinched
at the neck, tying him in tight.
But for the weekend instead he’ll be pinched in
the waist, and shrouding his stereotype in a
robe. Retreat, they call it, and that sounds
right: the persona he’s painted over his frame
over years and years at the top of the shiny glass building
in the city is melting off and away.
It was his wife, coming at him and wielding one of her dangerous
ideas, saying,
“Let the boys handle
the business;
take a break.”
He suggested a detour seaside, but seeing breakers isn’t what she meant,
wanting him sunk in deeper than sea level.
Ten days later he’s sat on the right angles of his knees
and fallen almost asleep through all of it. The room is filled with
those slumped in kinetic energy, each told to await “sensations.”
This man is sore and convinced he’s a loser, and feels only ordinary.
He worries the instructors, in their eternal calm,
wondering why he’s disqualified from feeling. Maybe he’s nervous to
question the authorities, but he’s slick by the time he asks.
“Nothing?” they ask him, taking in his full sight.
“Nothing,” he confirms. He brushes his brow.
They smile, at one another and him in turn, their eyes alight and on
his broken sweat, and conclude that,
coincidentally, he’s broken through.
butfatherijustwanttowrite 